WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a former Texas police officer convicted in the death of a woman who was shot through a window of her home.
The justices did not detail their reasoning, as is typical, and none publicly dissented.
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Aaron Dean was convicted of manslaughter in Atatiana Jefferson's fatal shooting, and he was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison. Dean was originally charged with murder. He argued on appeal that prosecutors should not have been allowed to ask the jury to consider the lesser charge at the end of the trial.
Dean, who is white, shot Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, on Oct. 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a nonemergency police line to report that the front door to Jefferson’s home was open.
It later emerged that Jefferson and her nephew had left the doors open to vent smoke after he had burned hamburgers, and the two were up late playing video games.
Dean's guilty verdict was a rare conviction of an officer for killing someone who was also armed with a gun.
During the trial, the primary dispute was whether Dean knew Jefferson was armed. Dean testified that he saw her weapon. Prosecutors said the evidence showed otherwise.
Body camera footage showed that Dean and a second officer who responded to the call did not identify themselves as police at the house. Dean and the other officer testified that they thought the house might have been burglarized and they quietly moved into the fenced-off backyard looking for signs of forced entry.
There, Dean, whose gun was drawn, fired a single shot through the window a moment after shouting at Jefferson, who was inside, to show her hands.
Jefferson' nephew testified that she took out her gun because she believed there was an intruder in the backyard.